This ought to be simple: To be a
Catholic theologian is to use your intellect and spiritual life to relate the
timeless teachings of the Church to the specific time in which you live. The
current-day denizens of this sad age are desperate
for the Truth. They’re desperate for the Truth and True Spirituality.
- Where a Bergoglio stresses “mercy” or even “healing”, it ought to be obvious that no one will ask for either if they think they don’t need it; if, for example, that “Gay is okay” or marriage is something to leave if you’re bored or if euthanasia – what is it but simply: “Old? Sick? Then die!”
Theologians should be promoting Truth
and True Spirituality instead of changing them to fit this wretched age of
moral Lilliputians. Too many modern theologians pervert the Church’s timeless
teaching to match the contemporary banality we suffer through. They’re as
morally confused as Karl Rahner.
Poor Fr Longenecker writes, “Critics
of propositional faith believe that, at best, the propositions are simply a
framework or structure of belief, and that the real experience is far more
complicated, but also far more exciting and real.”
“Real”? C’mon, Father. “REAL”? If the theologians whom you
describe think that way, they’re the blind leading the blind. These “propositions”
are the dogmas of the Faith, the
bolts that hold it together! So if you want to write clearly about this
subject, toss out the theologians’ Alinksy tag and call them dogmas. They’re the black-and-white
“bottom line” of what it’s all about. That’s because today’s “real experience” in
sin is no different than it was in the pagan Roman Empire. Well, I suppose you
could let the technology dazzle you, but underneath all our gadgets, which most
people have no clue how they actually work and can’t possibly repair them when
the civilization crashes, but underneath all that, we’re the same people as those
Ur, of Sodom, of St. Paul’s Corinth or St. Peter’s Roma!
Fr Dwight continues, “They (these modern
theologians) criticize those who like a propositional faith as being rigid,
legalistic or Pharisaical.” Ah, yes. The pope does that ad nauseum. “The critics of propositional faith like to emphasize
the more subjective ‘encounter with Christ.’ They advocate getting away from
all the debates about doctrine or canon law, rolling up one’s sleeves and
getting busy doing God’s work in the world.”
Do they? Their position is pathetic. How so?
- You say that that is “subjective” and so it is! How can these critics remotely know what “God’s work in the world” is if they don’t have clear-cut, strong, “propositions”, a.k.a. DOGMAS and Doctrines (“dogma” just the Greek for “doctrine”).
- These doctrines are fundamental to how we approach both God and each other because they explain who we are, Who and What God is, what our nature is after the Fall and God’s prescription for a cure, His long-running Covenantal Plan for our salvation.
- These dogmas define the Faith, they’re the religion’s DNA.
- Without every priest and theologian and bishop (and even a large portion of the laity) being absolutely STEEPED in these “propositions”, there’s no way on God’s Earth we CAN do “God’s work” for we wouldn’t know what it is.
And that's the Vatican II Church in a nutshell. It avoids all that. It avoids the nuts and bolts of the religion. It avoids the beauty of it and the shock, the demands of Christ which He makes on every page of the Gospel you never hear it talking about. What is the modern Church doing? Prattling on about propositions instead of dogmas, worshiping in a brain-locked 1970's style polyester pastel liturgy, and its major theologians are either crazy in love with old ladies (review all the weirdness Rahner felt and did for his untouchable "love", who would not give up her abbot lover – if he even existed), or waiting for the next supposed "revelation" from a woman seer, as did von Balthasar.
Fr Dwight’s column is quite long and
he tries to cover the bases, as it were, but he doesn't go into ANY detail about how goofy the theologians have been who lambast "propositional faith". Yet he finally does come back around again to
some degree of support for “Propositional” Catholics, referring to them as the
trellis upon which the vines of fruitful
Gospel love bears rich harvest. He writes, “My own take on this, therefore, is
that I understand the need for the ‘encounter with Christ’ as opposed to a
faith that is merely propositional, but I also believe that without a clear
affirmation of the propositions of our faith, the ‘encounter with Christ’
becomes no more than a subjective religious experience. Both are needed….”
(Head smack.) Yes, if by "subjective religious experience" you mean a taste of the Spiritual Reality all around us, yes, yes. But you should be definitely saying Mass in such a way that encourages that: and the "Novus Ordo" doesn't do so.
As for "encounters with Christ"...ah, yes. The Protestant “Encounter
with Christ”. Well, though not raised a Protestant, I grew up with them, and I
know any number who “encountered Christ” and then “disencountered” Him later.
All hat and no cattle? Perhaps.
- Protestantism is deeply, mortally flawed for a host of reasons – let's be honest here – but aside from its rejection of the Church's authority, which has left it in incoherence, in some 20,000 odd denominations – its basic problem: it is mnemonic.
- For Protestantism, Christ is a memory, long Ascended. Oh, He can send you a warm feeling now and again (Calvin taught you knew you were saved when you felt a warm glow in your innards).
- He's not here now (except in spirit when two or three are gathered in His name: (Matthew 18:20)...
- Whereas in Catholicism, Christ is metaphysically present. He's really here, Body and Blood. THAT's a TRUE "Encounter with Christ" and it is profoundly liturgical, meaning a formal act of worship in which the veil between Earth and Heaven is drawn back, and Reality is truly present to us, as it will be in Heaven (the Book of Revelation describes the liturgy of Heaven).
- Yet of course the Church since Vatican II has eschewed all that for, well, Protestantism.
- I mean, it's gone the route of the mainline Protestant Churches in terms of worship, and has thus lots massive amounts of its laity (and religious), as they themselves have.
- Thus now we're lamely talking up "encounters with Christ" without the proverbial clue.
Fr Dwight then tries to explain
Bergoglio’s dereliction of duty thus: “In other words, he does not answer his
critics because he does not wish to play their game. He does not wish to be
drawn into their legalistic arguments, but instead wants to continue to
challenge them.”
Change “challenge” there, Father
Longenecker, to “insult” or “ridicule” or “disparage,” and you’ve got it.
It ain’t no game, Father
Longenecker. The authors of the Dubia and all these various critics you detail
in the first third of your column are not playing a “game” and they’re not
being “legalistic”. And Jorge Bergoglio isn’t “challenging” them, he’s stepping
all over them, shoving them down hard into the mucky quicksand, face first. We’re “bead
counters” he has said, and “rabbits”, and God knows what else he’s called us.
For a POPE to call the pious, the devout, such names, is a rank abomination. It
sure doesn’t show any good will on his part, to put it mildly. It literally
drips spiritual arrogance and radiates “virtue signaling” of a narcissistic
poseur.
The basic job of any pope is not to somehow
“challenge the belief” of the core Church, those who love the ancient Mass and
devotions. It is NOT to be a theologian or evangelist, either, actually, any
more than a rock star or emperor: it’s to be a Rock. The Rock. Basic solid
pavement upon which the Truth stands against the ages. An unbreakable foundation. The pope's job is to guard the Deposit of Faith
and help his brother bishops stand tall and bear the Gospel through all the
horrors of this vale of tears. The buck stops with the pope, and this is why. He, at least,
cannot stand on quicksand. He has the final call because he has this “rock duty”,
and he has it precisely because the Church Militant needs such a top umpire on
Earth.
Pope Francis is not doing that job.
He’s embracing heretics and deviants and tossing the pious, the dévotes, as they were called during Richelieu's time, to the wolves just as Richelieu did when he embraced the
Swedes and heretical Germans and bankrupted France just to defeat the dévotes of the French court (Queen Anne) and to
bring down the Habsburgs.
Jorge Bergoglio is our Cardinal Richelieu,
and only God Himself can help us survive the disaster he’s foisted on us.
Fr Dwight says, ‟As a pastor I understand this and am
sympathetic to what I believe Pope Francis is trying to do.” Okay. Well, we can disagree about what
he’s trying to do, shall we? But just look at the mess around you. "By their
works you will know them." (Matthew 7:16-20) So Pope Francis shall be judged.
But in the meantime, that quicksand is getting soupier by the minute.
An Préachán
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